European Commission prefers breaking privacy to protecting kids
lightbluetouchpaper.org
lightbluetouchpaper.org
This contains the text of the requirements. Search for "Grooming" and you'll find some particularly horrifying chunks regarding "scanning of conversations for content." Plus, not only known existing CSAM, but also identifying new material. Because don't you trust machine learning that can't tell the difference between a cat and a ferret to know what is and isn't CSAM? That's a very real path to "You have a photo of your child in the bathtub and the police smash down your door."
I like this bit, though:
> The processing of users’ personal data for the purposes of detecting, reporting and removing online child sexual abuse has a significant impact on users’ rights and can be justified only in view of the importance of preventing and combating online child sexual abuse.
They can focus on ONE justification which is 'acceptable'. But one justification is all they need. They don't need more than one for total access.
Yes, we should absolutely do everything we can to protect the children. But losing our privacy is not and can never be an acceptable course of action.
There is a frighteningly short distance from giving up privacy due to CSAM, to a full-blown surveillance state.
>As mentioned, detecting ‘grooming’ would have a positive impact on the fundamental rights of potential victims especially by contributing to the prevention of abuse; if swift action is taken, it may even prevent a child from suffering harm. At the same time, the detection process is generally speaking the most intrusive one for users (compared to the detection of the dissemination of known and new child sexual abuse material), since it requires automatically scanning through texts in interpersonal communications. It is important to bear in mind in this regard that such scanning is often the only possible way to detect it and that the technology used does not ‘understand’ the content of the communications but rather looks for known, pre-identified patterns that indicate potential grooming. Detection technologies have also already acquired a high degree of accuracy, although human oversight and review remain necessary, and indicators of ‘grooming’ are becoming ever more reliable with time, as the algorithms learn.
That whole paragraph sounds a lot more terrifying and intrusive. At least they admit the flaws, but I haven't quite had the best experience with the EU's way of handling this stuff.
More practically, I would assume "age of the users of a device" is a well-derived bit of information available to anyone who asks for it with the proper letterhead. Or who just helps themselves to it.
It's a headache no matter how I look at it.
1984 has never been about this.
It's about the weaknesses of men, that would gladly change a reduction of the chocolate ration into an increase, because it's their job to lie and alter the past, believing they are doing god's work.
Also, in 1984 surveillance is secret, not publicly stated in a formal document visible by everybody.
Better examples of 1984 in action: the DDR, the NSA.
Having a good will doesn't make it okay for the EU to become a helicopter parent, nor do I like the prospect of that good will evaporating and them having access to what is effectively more and more surveillance.
yeah, and what the Big Brother does to you if you don't follow rules is kept secret, by secret police agents, because
1 - the Big Brother doesn't physically exists
2 - people would revolt if they knew what really happens to deviants, so it's imperative they are kept in the dark (“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” )
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
So 1984 does not apply at all in this case, because the document is public and everyone can read it and eventually revolt against it
I mean considering Amazon has put in kajillions of dollars on their learning algorithms and yet now in 2022 those algorithms still aren’t even smart enough to figure out trivial stuff, like that I’m probably not gonna buy a second air fryer immediately after buying a first one, and stop advertising them to me. What hope do we have for this new algorithm?
>For example, Microsoft reports that the accuracy of its grooming detection tool is 88%, meaning that out of 100 conversations flagged as possible criminal solicitation of children, 12 can be excluded upon review and will not be reported to law enforcement; see annex 8 of the Impact Assessment.
Of course, anyone could poke a dozen holes in this statement. "Possible", so there still needs to be a ton of review. Microsoft reporting on its own detection tool. Etc.
I expect at some point the EU digital ID will be required to use when accessing the internet or perhaps when signing up for email, creating a Twitter account and such. This EU digital ID will
EU member states will become a carbon copy of China. People will worry what they can say out of fear that they will not be able to spend their hard-earned Euro CBDC.
---
So unless you can show me how a move away from democracy can happen, we won't turn into china soon.
I'm not going into the debate about whether there's an ulterior motive, but current eID solutions in various EU countries are considerably less draconian than what you're describing. The current solutions are going to tie into the new one, after all.
In Finland, as an example, we simply have a chip with a cert/key on ID cards. People without card readers or who don't want to use them are free to use their netbanking logins instead. Being able to use the same solution in other EU countries is of rather limited value to most, but it will ease up paperwork submission when travelling, moving to another member state, and so on.
And a lot of services would be fine to use a state ID because they can tie their advertising to a real and unique person. To secure against that the smart move is to reject the little convenience here for longtime benefit.
People are used to them, so it's really just a matter of time, before it goes digital.
I don't disagree with your observations, I just think its a forgone conclusion at this point.
That said I think the value lies in creating new non centralized (and less popular) solutions. They will probably never have mass appeal, but at least they will be there for people who want/need them.
Its the same AI coolaid silicon valley has been peddling for years and using it to justify various crap. So you should not be surprised
this comes up all the time, but one of the primary indicators that {person} will buy a second {item} of type {X} increases when they have already bought one.
However it does seem to me that I have never done this, even when I am unsatisfied with item, I soldier on for at least a year or two before saying aw screw it, perhaps the machines would be more impressive if they could recognize what people will and will not ever buy a new expensive item immediately again after buying one.
And it’s still a relatively trivial use case—-if it comes to potentially miring someone in legal issues, I hope the “algorithm” can do better than that.
I really wonder if it's true.
"...Thereby, the proposed Regulation limits the interference with the right to personal data protection of users and their right to confidentiality of communications, to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of ensuring the achievement of its objectives, that is, laying down harmonised rules for effectively preventing and combating online child sexual abuse in the internal market..."
For all effects, today the 11 of May, is the day the EU tried to remove the right to privacy in communications in the name of protecting children. From the hundreds of measures and police actions they could take them seem to think this is the most important.
There's also the simple fact that the reporting of CSAM involves someone seeing CSAM. You see it and then you report it so it gets removed. Does the copy in your browser cache incriminate you? I can also imagine someone deciding they need to save it to forward to the police, whether or not that's useful.
Reminder: Europe is not US.
Nobody can smash your door here without proper authorization from a court.
And even then, they would knock.
I mean my parents still have those pictures in photo albums and they have been shown multiple times to family friends or relatives - nobody has obvs objected - but there is nobody from a 3rd party with 0 context watching over their heads deciding if this is child porn or not. (Plus I think I look adorable with my duck shampoo and recently found it in the basement when doing cleanup <3). And I very much like those pictures as they are interesting moments of my life that I don't have memories of but are ME.
But to extend this - maybe my neighbours think that is super wrong, maybe my employer. In it's current form the regulation allows for a lot of private data spillage to other ppl.
Even if it's just - yes wrong flag by the alog -> someone gets to see me or my children naked - wtf I'd argue that's abuse.
This has never happened though!
Can you point me to a case in EU where a parent took a photo of their children and got in trouble?
So it's kinda like saying: but OP is right, we should all live underground, because aliens could fire lasers on us!
I think the idea is that of the risk posed by automation within inadequate workflows.
Which, incidentally, is a case-relevant reality in areas you yourself mentioned. And similarly, following there have been case-relevant realities of «repetitional damage, stress, potential job loss» - in other areas that still have caused troubles to citizens after inadequate workflows, and sometimes even owing to imperfect automation.
This is an urban legend. My country Germany often prides itself to have protections here but that is a lie. In reality courts are overwhelmed so they basically sign any request the executive brings in. We had that for a twitter comment that hit the news a few month ago, but we also have that for people buying flowerpots online because they were suspected to grow weed. No joke. Surveillance is again very strong here.
It is true though that they mostly knock at least or they wait until you are not at home. But the barriers are very low for a supposedly enlightened society. And recourse against illegal searches are very limited as well and some end with quite some property damage.
Some geniuses thought it would be a prudent idea to evaluate the performance of police by the cases they close. So they really have to search for crime in any niche. State incompetence of the highest level in the highest positions and people have very little protection against that and if at some point there isn't enough crime...
The tend not to even say sorry if their search was wrong. Neither the executive nor any other government entity. The police is the least guilty although the system relies that they only request reasonable searches.
Now imagine elsewhere.
Anyway: this has nothing to do with what I wrote, which is not an urban legend at all!
Doors have rarely (never AFAIK in my country) been smashed by the police, not even in those cases where there were actual terrorists inside the building.
Because our police forces are not trained to be war soldiers and are not armed to the teeth.
Have you noticed the tendency scattered around the world to freeze citizens' financial assets before trials?
Equating them is shallow at best and misleading at worst.
The problem is the world is full of crises that need government support, the question is which do we want addressed?
The government caused all those things to go up
Don’t confuse government causing a increase in government spending on something with causing an increase in the actual supply of that thing. When governments restrict the supply of healthcare and housing (which they do, through professional licensing and zoning regulations), they can spend more on them without increasing supply.
You seem to not address fraud in the market, like snake oil salesmen, at all
But the greatest increases in life expectancy were from the late 1800s to the mid 1900s. The improvements have slowed since then, appearing to plateau in the last decade or so.
And it just so happens that in that time period, the government had way less control over the healthcare system in the US.
Literacy is actually decreasing in recent years, as education spending by the government increases. Higher education has never been more expensive, thanks to guaranteed student loans provided by the federal government.
If you're more talking about developing countries, then the correlation is far stronger with level of economic development than with government involvement. In fact government involvement is often inversely correlated, slowing development.
Andrew Cuomo falsified and hid information regarding his mismanagement of elder care facilities. Hong Kong has been placed under de facto martial law by the CCP with the goal of crushing dissent. Various governments and government organizations have spied on their citizens through COVID tracking apps or secret purchases from databrokers. Barrack Obama recently delivered a speech at Stanford calling for an end to free speech on the net under the guise of "regulating social media" and "stopping the spread of disinformation".
Why is sacrificing rights to governments still considered a necessary solution to problems that governments create themselves? Have you learned nothing from history or those who lived through it long enough to write on the subject like Orwell and Arendt?
Don't you complain about mah free market libertarian data brokers!
One of the special power it grants him are no-bid contracts; among which are hundred of millions of dollars media organizations and public opinion polling of the population. He also reported the obligatory investigation that comes with invoking the emergency measures after the elections in October.
2. There is no one time to worry about "the kids"
3. Mental well-being because they had to stay at home - from my observation highly doubt it. All teenagers I know were even more social.
4. Ever kids in kindergarten - haven't seen any mental well-being issues.
5. Mental wellbeing is not a fixed thing - that comes from the env, which in the covid situation is mainly the parents.
6. I'm not saying it was handled well but hindsight is very easy. When a global pandemic happens and you have 1B variables - something will slip.
7. I completely agree that kids should not be the thing that should slip!!
Let's be clear, this has nothing to do with protecting kids and everything with backdoors. The idea here is that anyone that opposes this can be easily accused of being a child molestor.
But I think your take is not true. I can imagine that it might just be a really misinformed proposal to actually go against child abuse. I hope.
[...]
>So it’s really stupid for the European Commission to mandate centralised takedown by a police agency for the whole of Europe. This will be make everything really hard to fix once they find out that it doesn’t work, and it becomes obvious that child abuse websites stay up longer, causing real harm.
So basically a pr stunt from those who left the EU to feel better about themselves?
The world sometimes seems so ridiculous I can't believe it.
(In case it's to subtle, the actual child abusers or consumers of said content)
> Approximately 200,000 people in 38 states are currently on the sex offender registry for crimes they committed as children. Some were put on the registry when they were as young as eight years old.
I do not know about other EU countries.
[0]: https://www.mediawijsheid.nl/veelgestelde-vraag/is-sexting-s... (Dutch)
I think the grand parent comment is talking about leaking those images to other people without permission. That absolutely has to be illegal.
If those teenagers are minors and are sending sexual pictures of themselves, they are sending sexual pictures of minors. Without an exception in the law to specifically allow this, that can be and is illegal by the laws that criminalise possession or distribution of sexual pictures of minors. There should be an exception in the law for it, but until there is, there isn't.
It absolutely is.
It’s still consumption of illicit material depicting someone under the age of 18, which is a law being broken, even if it's by someone younger than 18.
Ask me how I know.
I'll give you a hint: I have an absolutely awful sounding thing on my criminal record from when I was 15.
Yes, it can and it is. Though most reasonable places would probably not enforce it harshly.
You can be either in support of total surveillance, or in support of abolishing the EU. There is no middle ground.
Indeed, in the words of the previous President of the European Commission:
“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker#1999
The current President of the European Commission has been a long time advocate for Internet control:
“However, in the digital community, her posturing for the EU’s top job has caused concern. In 2000, when Von Der Leyen was Families minister, she advocated for the mandatory blocking of child pornography online via a list of offending websites managed by police authorities. Germany’s Pirate Party claimed that the law would lead to censorship of the internet.”
“The outcry that resulted was dubbed the ‘Zensursula’ scandal, blending the German word for censorship (“Zensur”) and her name (“Ursula”). The move was eventually repealed after it being challenged broadly, including a petition that had garnered tens of thousands of signatures.” https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/digital-brief-...
Overall EU is a good idea, but total surveillance is a scary, scary concept that must be avoided at all cost, even at the cost of EU as concept.
This kind of shit pops up everywhere, not only the EU. I have no idea what tf is driving it, probably the same thing that turned many countries into dictatorships.
Human nature, really, but how these assholes always get into power is a mystery to me.
Why is it so popular to bash EU here over non sequitur?
is it jealousy or simply anti EU people not being able to mouth their opinions among their EU peers in Europe because they would be laughed at?
I'm bashing the EU because they are trying to create a surveillance state.
If that was true, we would all be worried.
Have you ever thought that your paranoia is not proof of anything?
Meanwhile:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Uni...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...
I am still worried about facts, especially those carried out by agencies working secretively under practically no control by the people, that sometimes also spy on those same people they are sworn to protect.
Anyway, EU is not a State, so EU can't technically build a surveillance State.
EU is not the NSA.
that's frankly one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read in my entire life.
Care to explain what's your rationale behind it?
Where's, for example, the European Snowden?
Where's proof of EU spying not only allied leaders, which is already bad enough, but the citizens of the country they work for?
The UK is a part of the Five Eyes and Snowden was stationed in Switzerland while doing mass surveillance.
UK is not EU
> Snowden was stationed in Switzerland
Switzerland is not EU
Should we label everything "the true face of" (meaning they are evil) when the representatives of 450 million people lay out some document we don't like?
So: “You can be either in support of total surveillance, or in support of abolishing the US. There is no middle ground.”
I would also guess that you could substitute the EU with any single EU country with the same result. Abolish Germany, abolish France, abolish Italy, abolish all parliaments, there's no middle ground.
Most obvious false dichotomy I've seen. Try harder.
Versus
> That is to enable the new agency to undermine end-to-end encryption by mandating client-side scanning
This article needs to be clear about what these agencies are after: E2E encrypted messaging apps, or 'websites'. Because a messaging app is not a 'website'.
I might be totally mistaken though.
> In German: https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2021/Kindesmissbrauc...
I remember another article, which I can't find right now, with an interview, where a spokesperson explicitly said that taking down the sites is not their responsibility.
and yet all the scandals about breaking the privacy of users for profit or worse didn't come from EU.
Maybe they are not that wrong...
When it comes to privacy invasion the EU has been a champion in curbing massively intrusive corporate practices for years now.
Some of it is awful yes, but other high visibility projects have been amazing. I'm glad to be European when I look at the insanity that is the American tracking and personal data brokers industry.
I recommend a recent John Oliver on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqn3gR1WTcA
Government is a body of elected people, by the people.
And it's subject to the people's scrutiny!
What is missing is putting it all together and be able to replicate the network effects you get from centralized media, like if you are able to reach one person, be able to reach in a simple way all of his friends as well (supposing they want to be reached).
I talk about this stuff all the time. I blog [1] about it and complain about it to my family and friends until it gets annoying. And it _does not matter_ how much individual effort I put into this because people have no incentive to change.
But I think we people who are into tech should have coordinated more among ourselves that at least we used and helped to grow until they are mature enough for regular people.
For social networks did you have a choice? Yes but your choices are join the network others are on, get others on networks you want or make friends on networks no one you know is on. This has always been like this.. if the group is going to a movie.. you can tag along, you can try to influence what movie, you can throw a party and get others to drop the movie idea.
In your case I would pick new friends and become the leader of that pack. Family I would go visit..
In my admittedly short experience, LinkedIn and in-person networking are tied on this front.
> your choices are join the network others are on, get others on networks you want or make friends on networks no one you know is on
I think it's bad that we're expected to choose between existing communities and our privacy, our consent, and our dignity. The correct way to address this is regulation.
You mean this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
The whole story with client-side scanning resembles Snowden's description of NSA's workday: people are so used to the idea of surveillance day in and day out that it doesn't occur to them for a second that it might not be appropriate.
On the other hand civilians are more "defense" minded, because they're not allowed to attack in the first place. So their preferred M.O. is to protect systems and encrypt communications.
A lot of governments apparently don't have as large/as influentual defense minded departments or units, else we wouldn't keep seeing this topic coming back.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31329368 (300 comments)
It doesn't seem to me the document goes very much into detail on the effects this will cause for privacy rights, both with its application and indirectly, and how it should be implemented, despite briefly bringing up encryption concerns from the opposition. I can't see this anonymized data collection work as claimed due to the sensitive nature of the subject at hand (private conversations), and I wonder about the enforcement rights it'd allow (imposition of "remedies", fines, periodic penalty payments, and "power to adopt interim measures to avoid the risk of serious harm") and the importance of rapid content deletion for small-to-medium online platforms and personal sites as it has been hinted in the past. I really do not trust companies to have a privacy minded approach nor I consider my government capable of doing so as it does not benefit it in practice. (the document does mention strong support from "law enforcement authorities")
But at the same time I am too turned off by the fact that I'd actually need to visit the link just to learn the title of this video to actually do the click.
Ever felt the same?
otherwise it seems it will just be this technological cat and mouse game that destroys privacy rights and empowers bad actors to plant it maliciously (swatting 2.0).
Of course, some teens are going to get tempted and do stupid things either way. Imagine the least innocent thing you know about your peers back in those days, many will have likely been tempted to go off the deeper end in some way. It's difficult to give children safety and privacy when they actively seek to dare themselves and one another, not heed warnings, etc.
what an incredibly enlightened idea! was it any good? did it work?
Like I said, some teens are still going to do stupid stuff despite being warned. It's difficult to give them both autonomy, security and privacy when they won't heed warnings. I like to believe not invading their privacy and simply teaching them is enough, but some others might feel the EU's need to be a universal helicopter parent to be justified when the consequences are too high.
Because that's how you protect people privacy, right???
Why not put military personnel in every corner of every street and check if people have the "approved by the government" tattoo on their wrists?
I'm not promoting such practices. In fact, I was just trying to use the legislators logic: if they are truthful about their "protecting children" slogan, let them start their policing where the predators are most likely to be found instead of targeting the entire population.
they would try to solve it as they see fit.
legislators are voted by the people, with many different ideas. they aren't a caste disconnected by the rest of the World.
especially in EU institutions where is much harder to make a career over lobbying for some local interest.
Worst politicians in Europe work in national parliaments.
> let them start their policing where the predators are
You mean in their houses, where the vast majority of the abuses take place?
Please, don't post simplistic vox populi stuff.
It seems for them the solution is to destroy privacy for the entire population.
> Please, don't post simplistic vox populi stuff.
Please ask this to the European Commision instead.
a bit of overreaction never fails to double back on poor arguments.
> Please ask this to the European Commision instead.
as a matter of fact I do.
I participate actively.
Do you?
well, the predators are more likely found in schools, which are way more numerous than (actively used) churches (and temples and synagogues and mosques...)
this last group is the fucking fascist small dick energy idiots, who believe in order based on a hierarchy of people, classes, races, countries, etc...
This is giving up their privacy for nothing in return, or worse, negative restrictions on their political freedom and freedom of expression.
Security and freedom are "platonic" ideals. None of those exists in the abstract, as a real world thing, and you can't find one without the other in the wild (in a Disney-like world, maybe, but not in the real world, in the presense of others, that is people that want to deprive you of either/both, and can benefit from doing so).
Trivially speaking, if some thugs can just come and beat you with no police or legal resources available to you, you don't have either pricacy or security. Both are at their mercy.
You could of course defend yourself, but then you're still getting your freedom through security: it's just that in this case you're obligated to cater get that security on your own.
So, we trade some freedom (giving state the ability to enforce laws, have police) in excange for security. And vice versa.
But in any case, my point above was different: that what TFA descrives is not a tradeoff between privacy and security, it is giving up privacy for no real benefit. If anything, losing encryption costs in both privacy AND security.
And good security is what gives you the safety to be free.
If you want to sacrifice freedom for security, you might end up putting the cart before the horse.
And of course sacrificing privacy for security is at best balancing 2 different kinds of security. You're not necessarily gaining security.
In this case it means that there's no guarantee that children will actually netto be safer if people can scan private communications.
My assumption is that you can't but I might be wrong - haven't read the whole document. So correct me if I'm wrong.
By that logic you would need a ton of actual CP to create CP deepfakes.
Some some tech like the above. Maybe the term deep-fake is not the correct one
Plus you only need images of children in general - not even CP to create those 3 models and then it's just Unreal engine let's say.
They should focus on their country.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/uk-tells-messaging-apps-no...
Of course, the above is laid on thick and incoherently with sarcasm.
Fixed the title.